Speaking of contentious redistricting …A little while ago, the Dallas Independent School District board of trustees was treated to its own redistricting drama courtesy the public speakers lined up, for the most part, behind trustee Carla Ranger, who has accused board president Lew Blackburn of wanting “to take by force”…
Speaking of the DISD board of trustees’ meeting agenda for Thursday night …Here’s an item of interest: Consider and Take Possible Action to Approve Amendment to Board Policy BJCG (Local) Superintendent Retirement or Resignation (First Reading), which was initially on the consent agenda but has since been pulled for a…
The Annie E. Casey Foundation just released KIDS COUNT, its annual report on child well-being in every state across the U.S. One of their grantees, the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, put the report for Texas on its website on Wednesday: The State of Texas Children. So how are…
You can’t swing a mace and chain around Observer HQ without hitting someone who knows what it’s like to fight in a real newspaper war. That Buzz fellow worked in San Antonio back when the Express-News toiled against the Light. Schutze and Wilonsky are both veterans of The Dallas Morning…
How does one explain the follicle-by-follicle perfection of Gov. Rick Perry’s imperturbable man-mane? Where does his mega-watt smile and its rows of pearly whites come from? Braces? No, silly. They come from God. God spoke, and Perry was born a man of uncommon comeliness. That, Friends of Unfair Park, is…
Not so very long ago it looked as though Paul Quinn College on Simpson Stuart Road might not be long for this world, following the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ decision to yank its accreditation. Appeals were made; lawsuits, filed. And the entire time, president Michael Sorrell stood firm,…
Went to look for something on the Dallas Independent School District’s website … only to discover that the DISD has a new website. Trustees got a sneak peek Thursday; it went live moments ago, turns out. It’s certainly a nicer shade of blue than its predecessor. And, I see the…
In July we told you about Dr. David Shorrman, author of The Exchange of Truth: Liberating the World From the Lie of Evolution and a member of the state biology panel making recommendations to the Texas Board of Education. Turns out, Shorrman (pictured to the left) was riding in the…
While Dallas ISD is debating a change to their rules in order to make their campuses more gay-friendly, two local universities have landed, once again, on the Princeton Review’s list of “LGBT Unfriendly” schools. Released last week as part of Princeton Review’s mammoth collection of college rankings, the list ranks…
Last we checked there were around 800 teachers vying for 700 vacancies scattered throughout the Dallas Independent School District. Which, sure, sounds a little odd, given that only a few months ago the district was considering thousands of layoffs due to the state’s decision to gut public education. But truth…
Football coaches, even the high school kind, can be angry men. This is especially true early in the season, when their lives, from their standpoint anyway, are just one big shit salad of false starts and bad reads. Knowing all that, I would have forgiven Patrick Williams, the new coach…
Back in March we took a look at Dallas Independent School District trustee Edwin Flores’s proposal for evaluating the district’s best teachers — an imperative, he said at the time, given the layoffs and buyouts taking place due to the state’s budget shortfall. Turns out, that was bit the tip…
And the hits just keep on coming: One week ago today the Texas Education Agency officially announced that the Dallas Independent School District had more campuses deemed academically unacceptable (33) than exemplary (30) — a radical shift from last year’s stats, thanks in large part to the state doing away…
With a bright blue Frisbee on his head and a blow-up ball hanging from his lips by its mouthpiece, 9-year-old Emanuel spins around in circles so fast, his new camouflage backpack lifts from his body like a parachute at the moment of landing. Today is his birthday, but it feels…
Hundreds of former Dallas Independent School District teachers flocked to Harold Wendell Lang Sr. Middle School late yesterday. They were hoping to find new jobs after being told earlier this week that they were caught at the fault line of a shifting, budget-tightening rearrangement. The school’s parking lot was packed…
The Texas Education Agency won’t officially release its based-on-TAKS-scores state accountability ratings till ’round 1 this afternoon (here, for those so interested), at which point Commissioner of Education Robert Scott will hold a press conference in Austin. But the Dallas Independent School District’s not wasting any time releasing its results,…
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve received numerous emails suggesting I sign up for something called Leadership DISD, which promises to develop “education-focused, informed leaders within the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) service area who affect positive change and help to lead support efforts to bring about significant improvements…
And speaking of redistricting …The Dallas Independent School District will begin holding hearings tonight during which the public will finally get a long, hard look at the draft maps on the table, courtesy San Antonio attorney Rolando Rios (who Carla Ranger initially didn’t want to hire) and the law firm…
The State Board of Education met yesterday to debate which supplemental materials the state should use to update its outdated science textbooks. To make things easier, before the meeting, the board’s choices were narrowed down by allegedly reliable panels of stakeholders. But when it came to a biology panel making…
This morning at the Museum of Nature & Science in Fair Park, a group of very small people in oversized white lab coats were intently pulverizing strawberries in plastic bags. “Smash your strawberry into as fine a mess as you can,” urged their instructor, a considerably taller person, also lab-coated…
Front page of the morning’s paper has a pay-walled story about the Dallas Independent School District’s decision to “quietly” halt construction on a handful of schools due to receive ’08-bond money redos — quietly, as in, “During budget talks this spring, school leaders quietly decided to halt renovations and repairs…
It was revealed yesterday that Texas educators are just a wee trigger-happy when it comes to student discipline, removing almost 60 percent of the state’s students from the classroom at least once during middle and high school. Minority students are especially likely to get the boot, the Justice Center at…
